The Elephant in the Room: Doping in Soccer
There has been an increased focus on performance enhancing drugs in mainstream media the last decade, and we have seen many high profile doping scandals, with the Olympics and cycling being hit particularly hard. Yet, the world's most popular sport remains clean. Or does it?
A recent article from the BBC reveals that top players in English soccer are not subject to frequent drug tests. UK Anti-Doping, the United Kingdom's anti-doping agency, collected 1171 samples from a player pool of 524 players in the Premier League, meaning that a player would be tested just above two times per year, on average. When you consider that top players play upwards of 60 or 70 games per year, is is quite surprising that a player could be selected for doping tests just two times. Even worse, this effort is already a 47% increase on the doping testing that was carried out the season before, per the BBC.
More shocking still is the fact that a spokesperson for UK Anti-Doping claims this to be "one of the most comprehensive national anti-doping programmes in world sport". Never mind the notoriously strict testing testing of Olympic sports and the biological passport implemented in cycling (more on this soon): we know that the Italian anti-doping agency obtained 2557 samples from their soccer players. Keep in mind too, that the Premier League is the richest league in the world. They could fund more testing if they wanted to.
Elsewhere in Europe, the frequency of drug testing is, frankly, shocking. While the German national anti-doping agency is only behind England and Italy by a couple hundred samples taken, the French ADA took 558 samples, one fifth of the Italian effort. The Spanish soccer league has been the best league in the world for a decade, and their teams have dominated European continental club cups. To ensure that their teams aren't doping, Spanish NADA conducted 185 tests across all Spanish soccer. I thought England was bad, but Spain really tests one player for every seven soccer games, on average. At one time, they even stopped doing drug tests entirely.
Professor Ivan Waddington, expert on doping in sports, says "elite footballers in England are much less likely to be tested than athletes in other sports. You know with certainty that you will be tested at least once and probably three or four times a year if you are an elite track and field athlete". Waddington describes the level of drug testing in England as "unacceptable".
Not only is the amount of testing extremely low in soccer, but the method of testing is also lacklustre. Figures from WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, show that 33,227 samples were taken in soccer world-wide in 2016. The vast majority of these were urine tests, with just 5% of all drugs tests being blood tests. This despite the fact that we know performance enhancing drugs like EPO and human growth hormones can only be detected in blood tests. Anabolic steroid usage is also notoriously hard to detect in urine tests. Picture the best bodybuilder in the world. Wide as a barn door. That guy passes doping tests, and he's on a mountain of steroids.
Let's talk about cycling for a moment, in order to provide a comparison. Wikipedia's list of doping cases in cycling is as long an article as you'll find on Wikipedia, and includes nearly 700 citations. The sport has seen a large number of high profile doping scandals the last 20 years, and, as a result, has introduced one of the most invasive and strict anti-doping protocols in sport.
The international cycling federation, UCI, introduced the "whereabouts rule" 14 years ago. Under these rules, riders have to provide the federation with information about where they will be on every single day, including a one-hour window when they will be available for drug testing. Anti-doping agents can show up unannounced any day. Breaking the rule is met with harsh consequences. The Danish elite cyclist Michael Rasmussen received a two year ban in 2007 for reporting that he was on a training camp in Mexico when he really was in Italy.
Cycling's biological passport is an anti-doping system that looks at several blood samples from an individual athlete over many years. By looking at various "biomarkers" in the athlete's blood over time, you can easily spot anomalies, such as a sudden increase in red blood cells or testosterone levels. Australian road cyclist and PhD Louisa Lobigs explains:
“Every individual athlete has their own blood profile over their sporting career and the passport looks at their levels of haemoglobin (the protein that carries oxygen in the blood), haematocrit (red blood cell volume as a percentage of blood) or reticulocytes (young red blood cells). Over time, you see patterns in an athlete’s profile. Each of the markers should be relatively stable, there are factors like illness, altitude training which can affect the values."
Consider Lance Armstrong. Once upon a time, he was cycling's golden boy, winning seven Tour de France titles in a row. Now he is cycling's persona non grata. Doping allegations surrounded Armstrong for years, and when he, in 2013, admitted to extensive doping throughout his career, he was banned from the sport and his titles were retroactively stripped away from him. Armstrong, though, was doping tested around 300 times (at the very least) during his career and never failed a test.
If one of the greatest cyclists of all time can avoid detection 300 times while doping, how on earth does UK Anti-Doping plan on catching a doping soccer player with two tests per year? If we assume a soccer player in England has a 15 year professional career at the top level, which is entirely reasonable, that would mean they might be tested 30 times in their life. One tenth of Lance Armstrong, the most notorious drug cheat of all time.
If you play soccer in Spain and the anti-doping controllers only show up to take a urine sample from one player every seven games, you might as well go nuts with doping. The odds that you'll ever get tested are slim to none.
If a player is only tested twice per season on average, and only 5% of all drug testing is blood tests, what are the odds the anti-doping agencies will ever find anything? Are they even trying to find anything?
No pill for skill
People who don't believe there is doping in soccer, whether it be due to their naivety or the lack of large scale doping scandals, will often lean on one argument: "there is no pill for skill".
“I cannot see how a top player, or any player, would use drugs to acquire the skill to create a goalscoring situation, twist and chop a player, bring it onto his right foot from his left then bend it into the far corner.”
Indeed, soccer has been and remains a game that is based on technical skill: your ability to control the ball with subtle touches. There is also a substantial mental aspect, where your ability to assess situations quickly and make good decisions under pressure will influence your ability to perform at the highest level.
For Professor Waddington, though, there are clear advantages to be gained by using drugs as a soccer player: "The game is much faster than it was 10 or 20 years ago, players are playing more games, there are shorter recovery times and rewards for success are much greater. It is likely to lead to increased pressure on players to use drugs", Waddington stated to the BBC.
The physical side of soccer is just as important as the technical and mental aspects, with football nutrition specialist Dr. Dorianne Caruana Bonnici showing that an average elite player will run an average of 11 kilometres per game and burn an incredible 2000 calories. Surely, taking a drug that improves your stamina is something a soccer player would consider. As Stefan Matschiner, convicted of giving EPO, testosterone and growth hormones to professional cyclists, says:
It’s completely obvious that, if in the 80th or the 85th minute you have the same coordination abilities as in the 3rd minute, because you’ve been treated with substances that improve the oxygen rates in your blood, then you have an advantage against your opponents.
To talk about "no pill for skill" is a complete straw man argument. There are no sane people who claim that such a pill exists, so to dismantle that as an argument is a logical fallacy.
What does exist, though, is performance enhancing drugs that could increase your stamina, like EPO. Drugs that increase your energy levels, like stimulants. Drugs that increase your recovery rates, which may therefore allow you to train and play more frequently, like human growth hormone. Drugs that increase your muscle mass and strength, therefore increasing your force production in sprints and shots, like anabolic steroids.
If your argument is that there is no benefit in soccer to having greater stamina and energy levels, you are wrong. With elite players often playing three games per week in addition to training, there is a clear benefit in taking drugs that help you recover between games. Quicker recovery can also allow you to train harder, for longer, and more often, essentially increasing your skill by proxy. Do you not believe that a player who is stronger, faster and can produce more power is at an advantage?
Nevertheless, those who don't believe there is doping in soccer also overlook one more thing...
Soccer's questionable doping history
A long shadow looms over soccer's history. Whether or not you believe that soccer is rife with doping, it seems that doping is a common theme among some of history's greatest soccer teams.
Once upon a time, the website 4dfoot.com published an explosive article about doping in soccer; "Doping in Football: Fifty Years of Evidence". While the original website has since disappeared, the article has been copied and pasted to all corners of the internet and lives on in soccer folklore. Some of its contents will be discussed here.
The Hungarian national team of the 1950s is legendary in soccer. It is widely considered one of the best national teams of all time, despite never winning a World Cup and being unlucky enough to peak before the start of a European continental competition. Among their star players was Ferenc Puskás, who is viewed as one of the best strikers of all time.
The Hungarians were one of the favourites to win the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, setting a record for most goals scored in a World Cup and beating West Germany 8-3 in the group stage along the way. The final saw a repeat of the match between Hungary and West Germany. Just nine years after the end of the Second World War, Germany beat Hungary 3-2 in what would be known as the Miracle of Bern.
But was it a miracle? After the game, needles and syringes were found in the West German locker room. German sports historian and author Erik Eggers claims "there are strong indications that point to the injection of pervitin". Pervitin is a methamphetimine that was given to Nazi soldiers to "turn their fears into aggression".
It wasn't just national teams, either. Soccer clubs also seemed to partake. Il Grande Inter, Helenio Herrera's famous Internazionale side, was the most successful European soccer club during the 1960s. Ferruccio Mazzola, player on the team, and brother of their star playmaker Sandro Mazzola, believes they were given amphetamines by Herrera during their wonder years:
Herrera provided pills that were to be placed under our tongues. He used to experiment on us bench players only to later give them to the first team players. My brother Sandro suggested to me that if I had no intention of taking them, I should just run to the toilet and spit them out. Eventually Herrera found out and decided to dilute them in coffee. From that day on “Il Caffè Herrera” became a habit at Inter.
There may not be a more revered team in soccer history than Rinus Michel's Ajax team from the early 1970s. They were the inventors of the revolutionary "totaalvoetball", or total football, perhaps the single most influential style of football of all time. Their attack was spearheaded by Johan Cruyff at the peak of his powers, a player who many call the greatest European soccer player of all time. During their run of domination, they won the European Cup three years in a row: 1971, 1972 and 1973. Was it all due to tactical intelligence and technical perfection though?
Defender Barry Hulshoff, who was a part of the Ajax team that won three European Cups, stated in a 1973 interview:
I can remember well, a season or five ago, just before the away game against Real Madrid, we received a white pill, and also something in a capsule. We called it [chocolate sprinkles], I have no idea what it was. You felt very strong and never were out of oxygen. The bad thing was that you lost all saliva in your mouth.
Zico was voted as the 8th best player of the 21st century, and perhaps most famous for being part of the 1982 Brazil World Cup squad that was called "the greatest team to not win the World Cup". Even the most genius players are not exempt from doping, though. In 1987, Zico admitted to receiving "injections".
Early in my career, when I was 16 or 17, I received two to three injections at monthly intervals. They gave me more strength to train. I gained mass without compromising speed and agility.
If that doesn't sound like anabolic steroids to you, nothing ever will.
By now it may be tempting (and comforting) to think that doping was only a thing many decades ago, and certainly only among morally dubious teams. What about England? Surely they would be the shining star to take a stand against doping in sport?
When the 1998 World Cup started, some of the players started taking injections from [Glenn Hoddle, team manager's] favourite medic, a Frenchman called Dr Rougier. After some of the lads said they’d felt a real burst of energy, I decided to seize any help on offer. So many of the players decided to go for it before that Argentina match that there was a queue to see the doctor.
The above quote is from Gary Neville's autobiography. Neville retired in 2011 after winning 85 caps for England and 400 appearances for Manchester United, and is widely considered an English legend of the modern game.
Operación Puerto will be a familiar term for those of you who watch cycling. It was the codename for a Spanish investigation into Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. The investigation uncovered a wide doping conspiracy among dozens of top cyclists and was an enormous scandal in 2006. During the legal trial in 2013, the presiding judge instructed Fuentes that he was under no obligation to name athletes other than cyclists. Doctor Fuentes himself was annoyed that only cyclists were being targeted, revealing that he had worked with other athletes:
I worked with Spanish first and second division [soccer] clubs. Sometimes directly with the footballers themselves, sometimes by sharing my knowledge with the teams' doctors. I had an offer from an Italian club but I turned it down.
As part of the investigation against Fuentes, his laboratory was raided by Spanish authorities, who found over 200 blood bags from various athletes. French newspaper La Monde reported that they had obtained documents from Fuentes' "seasonal preparation plans" for Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid. Despite Fuentes himself saying he would be willing to identify every single sample of blood that was found, the presiding judge ordered the blood samples found in Fuentes' laboratory be destroyed.
Why would the judge tell Fuentes he has no obligation to talk about soccer? Why would the judge want potential evidence for doping in soccer to be destroyed?
This is without going into other high profile cases like Juventus being found guilty of EPO doping and Pep Guardiola's positive test for anabolic steroids.
“Doping is just as much a problem in football as it is in tennis, athletics, swimming and cycling. It’s part of daily life. I’ve worked with footballers. They use Testosterone, EPO, Ephedrine and Stimulants.”
A clean sport?
Soccer is obviously a sport that is dependent on technical ability, and not just brute force. That doesn't mean that there aren't drugs available that would enhance the average player's performance levels. In fact, there are a number of things one could take to gain an edge over one's competition.
As the speed of the game rises and the money on the line doubles every decade, it would be beyond naive to think that a professional athlete, whose income depends on his performance, would be staunchly opposed to doping. They have everything to gain by doping.
With anti-doping protocols being as relaxed as they currently are, there doesn't seem to be much risk to doing it. An average player will be tested only a handful of times per year. Even then, only 5% of those tests will be a blood test, the only test that can really discover anything of value.
Soccer's history is littered with stories of mysterious injections and pills that make you harder, better, faster, stronger, and the players don't even bother asking the doctors what they're about to receive. If there was doping during the 50s, 60s and 70s, then there is surely much more doping now that there is a huge financial incentive to do so. Players at the top level earn tens of millions of dollars every year.
Still, FIFA claims there is no doping problem in soccer. Chief medical officer Dr. Dvorak said this after the 2014 World Cup:
There were no failed tests, which I'm very pleased about. It shows it's clean.
Personally, I am more inclined to side with Dick Pound, founding president of the World Anti-Doping Agency: the fact that no one gets caught is "almost more suspicious".
“Football is 100% clean”
Really, Cristiano? Soccer might be a ticking time bomb waiting to explode into its first modern doping scandal. But for a doping scandal to be discovered, you first have to look for it. It is entirely possible that the Olympics and cycling have more doping scandals because their anti-doping protocols are more invasive, more frequent and of higher quality.
If the difference between obscurity and being a multimillionaire with hordes of adoring fans, would you be opposed to a few pinpricks in your leg?
